This highly acclaimed series provides survey articles on the present state and future direction of research in important branches of applied mechanicsAdvances in Applied Mechanics has a history of publishing comprehensive,state-of-the-art articles in numerous subfields of applied mechanics.But in no way does this imply that this particular area has been fullyexcavated. The articles in the present volume give convincing evidence thatthe developments often continue, requiring an update of previous advances.Eduard Riks' article gives an up-to-date overview of the advancementsmade in the area of (post)buckling analysis since the often-quoted articlein this series by B. Budiansky in 1974 (Vol. 14, pp. 2-65). In addition toproviding a thorough outline of modern, computational techniques forbuckling and postbuckling analysis of structures, this article also discussesrecent methods of carrying out transient analyses after loss of stability.The latter offers new interesting insights into the notorious phenomenonof mode jumping.